Reasons, but not *the* reason

Why do you read, why do you write?

Photo by Yannick Pulver on Unsplash

There’s a poem I’ve been thinking about for a few months, The Beauty of Things, by Robinson Jeffers:

To feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things—earth,

stone and water,

Beast, man and woman, sun, moon and stars—

The blood-shot beauty of human nature, its thoughts,

frenzies and passions,

And unhuman nature its towering reality—

For man’s half dream; man, you might say, is nature

dreaming, but rock

And water and sky are constant—to feel

Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the

natural

Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.

The rest’s diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the

intricate ideas,

The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.

~~

It’s the final quatrain—particularly the first and last lines—that I’ve been holding on to most.

Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.

 The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.

Every time I read the line, “Beauty, is the sole business of poetry,” including that jarring comma that forces us to sit with the word “beauty” for a moment before we continue, I let out a deep exhale. There’s something in that line that feels like relief. I feel seen.

In his poem, Jeffers is referring to the relentless, unfathomable beauty of the natural world, which persists in its wild brilliance no matter how reckless humans are with their “frenzies and passions.” Capturing the ravishing ecology of our planet, “to feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things—earth, stone and water,” is his reason for writing poetry.

Jeffers is so sure of himself; I love his steady hand. I admire how assertively he expresses his mission statement as an artist, his core belief.

And as the poem has taken root in my brain, it’s got me thinking about my own reasons.

This year, I’ve also grown weary of “intricate ideas or noble sentiments” unless they are told beautifully or anchored in a human story. I’m not interested in art that obscures emotion with intellect. I’m tired of thoughts for thoughts’ sake. Sick to death of hot “takes.”

Please: I wish death to the discourse.

I’ve seen how flowery talking points can elide facts and rile people into rabid mobs. If some “holy or noble sentiment” is easy to shout—if it can be distilled into a soundbite—it might be effective marketing, but it isn’t likely to bring us closer to the truth.

To be clear: I don’t mean to espouse binary thinking that pits emotion v. intellect, thoughts v. feelings. Really, all of the above is best. But I’m finding myself more drawn to media that moves me with its depth rather than impresses me with its cleverness.

More heart, less head. That’s the headline. But I want to probe a little deeper.

What is the reason?

To prepare for querying agents and applying to residencies down the road, I’ve been honing some of the messaging around my novel-in-progress, The Shrewdness, and thinking about my artist’s statement. I’ve had to do deep thinking about how to communicate: What is my work about and why am I compelled to make it?

Jeffers poem provides a helpful framework for thinking about this: Sure, there are lots of reasons to make things. But what is THE reason?

To think about this as a writer, I first thought about my behavior and preferences as a reader. There are countless reasons I might engage with an artistic work, all of them good, but what is the purpose that lights me up?

Like Jeffers, beauty is my reason too.

But that’s not specific enough. The question is: What kind of beauty inspires you, what is so crucial to express that its worthy of devotion, of committing your divine creative effort towards? What is the “sole business” of your craft?

For Jeffers, it’s about expressing “the astonishing beauty of things.”

For me, as I thought about the stories I cherish, I realized they are centered around expressing the astonishing beauty of human spirit and connection.

I’ll trade a thousand intricate ideas for just one moment where two people hold each other close. Or grasp, heartbroken, at the empty space where a loved one used to be.

I find “brilliant” works that obscure the emotive elements with intellect or wrap up the story in a too-clever conceit tiresome. There are books I’ve stopped reading because they create a level of remove with postmodern footnotes or esoteric academic allusions.

This is not to say that being clever and smart are bad reasons to write a book or a poem, but for me they are not a good enough reason on their own to read them.

Recently, I read a good novel, Saint X, which tells the tale of a privileged young woman who dies suspiciously while on vacation in the Caribbean with her family. The story is about the impact the death has on her surviving sister and the island nation where the tragedy occurred, and explores themes of class, race, loss, yearning, and unfulfilled potential. It was wonderfully written, well researched, deftly handled multiple narrators and timelines, and had a compelling mystery at the heart of its plot. Those are all good reasons to read a story, but are they the reason? While I enjoyed the book, it somehow fell flat; I had trouble connecting emotionally. There was a clinical, journalistic level of remove from the characters, almost like a case study. Sometimes it read like a novel in the style of non-fiction. The book was very successful at making me think, but less successful at making me feel.

Contrast that with my experience reading Tana French, an author whose work always lifts me up. Ostensibly, many of the reasons for reading a Tana French book are similar to the reasons you might be drawn to Saint X.

French’s books always offer a murder mystery, skilled plotting, lyrical writing, and a lush sense of place that grounds you in the story. And I devour all of those elements in each of her works. But when I think about the reason that French’s body of work really sings, it’s her seamless ability to place human connection at the center of the action.

When I first read French’s debut novel, In the Woods, I couldn’t put it down. A twelve-year old girl is found murdered in the woods in almost exactly the same way as an unsolved child murder from twenty years ago. The book has an electrifying premise, and propulsive sleuthing and action, but the thing I remember most about it is not the plot or the mystery—it’s the central relationship between the two detectives on the case. The dissolution of the detectives’ relationship was more devastating to me than the unanswered questions in the murder case.

In another one of my favorite Tana French books, The Secret Place, the thing I remember most is not the fascinating murder mystery set at an exclusive boarding school for girls, but how richly she illustrates the life-changing magic of girlhood friendships. The stress on the relationship between the four girls, the main characters embroiled in a mystery as they wrestle with adolescence, beguiled me even more than the question of whodunnit.

And the same goes for French’s most recent book, The Searcher. A mystery grips a retired Chicago detective who finds himself a fish-out-of-water in the stunning, unforgiving Irish countryside. What’s the emotional heart of the book? The unlikely relationship that develops between the grizzled detective and the moody, secretive neighborhood kid in search of a father figure. As with all of French’s books, the mystery, the writing, the setting, are all important reasons to read the book. But in the end, the reason I’ll stay up all night to get through to the very last page, is the human connection burning bright throughout every twist and turn, setting the whole story alight. It seems to me: That’s the sole business of fiction. The beauty of human connection is what draws me in as a reader and ignites me as a writer.

I still may not have a succinct articulation of my artist’s statement. But I do know this: One of my fundamental principles is that human beings need each other. We are all interconnected, our fates intertwined. My reason for creating is to celebrate this sacred bond between us. I hope to make a body of work that honors the light of interpersonal connection and brings people together.

That’s my reason. What’s yours?